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Right off the bat, I was a little confused about this comic. The title font is, forgive me, horrible. I can barely read the title at all, and if I didn’t know what it was called before I actually saw it, I might still be wondering! Not really, but close. It also doesn’t really fit the tone of the comic, but maybe I’m missing something. Okay, so there’s that, but, then, there’s the cover art. There’s a ghostly figure made of moaning faces hovering ominously over the earth. Alright. You won me back. So, here I am opening to page one, and already I’m torn about this comic.
Batman: Arkham City is perhaps the best comic adaptation I have ever seen. It has more scope than the Nolan Batman movies, more villains than the X-Men movies, and gives you a better sense of being a superhero than any other video game has.
The rough plot is simple: the former warden of Arkham Asylum has been elected mayor and closed off a large section of the city. Then, every single prisoner from the asylum and the regular prison has been deposited in the new facility to survive or not, as best as they can. Think Escape From New York with better special effects and super villains. Obviously, things go poorly, and Batman sets out to save the day.
"Who's the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?"
Is this the first time we've seen a quote from the movies used as a fortune cookie? Methinks yes! And, rather fitting for this episode.
Greetings, Fanboys and Fangirls!
We at Fanboy Comics are doers, so we really dig new projects. We’re also comic book fans, so art is really important to us. And, our dedication to the zombies of the world really can’t be overstated. Understandably, we were more than a little excited when we got wind of Z.A.P., the Zombie Art Project.
Toy sculpture/artist Mikie Graham is the individual responsible for the undead toy horde that is the Zombie Art Project. Graham’s zombies are shambling off at the pace of eight customized and zombified Playmobil figures a week, all leading up to a culmination on Halloween 2011, when he will release a completely custom play set.
Coming-of-age films have a tendency to skirt clichés and follow predictable character and plot arcs; however, if done right, a bildungsroman can still feel new, and it can evoke empathy from its audience. Unfortunately, The Art of Getting By (previously titled Homework) does none of these things. The select redeeming scenes and character performances are vastly overshadowed by the underwhelming plot. Sadly, the story gets caught up in cliché after cliché which builds to a predictable and unsatisfying outcome.
John Carpenter’s The Thing is my new favorite horror movie. It generally goes for the long scare rather than the cat jumping out at you. Rather than cultivating terror, this film generates dread. This is achieved by breaking many of the rules for horror and following many of the rules of a mystery. There’s no damsel in distress, or damsel of any kind, and while things start to go wrong almost immediately after the movie starts, the villain isn’t revealed or even properly teased until we are maybe fifteen minutes in. We do get a strong sense of unease, but no real details are revealed until the characters visit the Norwegian base, which is the setting of the prequel. What this movie does so well is resist the temptation to become a monster movie, even after the scariest monster I’ve ever freaking seen is revealed.
Buffy: Season 9 #2 is a near perfect example of what a Buffy comic should be. Andrew Chambliss delivers a script that hits all the right notes (humor, horror, surprises, and the character-y stuff we Whedon fans love so much), and Georges Jeanty keeps pace with his writer, providing some of the best pencils he’s done on the series! This team is smokin’ hot and showing no signs of losing heat!
SPOILERS BELOW
The hits just keep on coming with the latest issue of Pariah from creator/writer Aron Warner, writer Phil Gelatt, and artist Brett Weldele. We learn the history of the socially deficient Franklin Hyde and why he needs all the “Vitros” to be gathered together. We learn why he’s so darn odd and what his parents are like. We learn what he wants and what he’s willing to do to get it. We learn all this, but, by the conclusion of the issue, we haven’t learned all we really want to know, which is: when can I get Issue #5?!
"Understanding is Honoring the Truth Beneath the Surface"
No Obi-Wan again? You're killing me, guys! C-3PO and R2-D2 are in the spotlight this time around, which led to a pretty fun episode.
It was interesting to see The Aleena. The only other time we ever saw them was in The Phantom Menace with the one Aleena crashing his pod racer with what was probably the most hilarious death scream ever captured on film. The Aleena are a strange looking bunch, but you can't help but think how adorable they are in their speaeh and mannerisms. Not too cutesy, but we're bordering on Ewoks, here. That's not a complaint, because they did actually make me laugh quite a few times. Especially at the very beginning with an Aleena flying up next to Commander Wollfe's ship, speaking in hilarious jibberish, and Wollfe stating, "Great. It's gonna be one of THOSE planets." I was cracking up.
One of the disadvantages of writing about video games is that, in general, most sales happen in the first week. Further compounding that is the huge number of sales that happen on the first day. So, in order for a video game review to be relevant, it has to feature games that haven’t come out yet, or games that weren’t too popular and might have been missed by a large potential audience. This is just one of the odd and slightly broken things about this hobby of mine.
Just to complicate things more for our dear reviewers, only the largest publications get early access to video games. As a writer about video games for a smaller website (I love you guys!), my MO is usually to focus on those smaller games. I thought I’d try something new this week.